Please critique Tommy & Amy
 

Here's a portrait I just finished. It has already been delivered so I cannot make any changes but I would welcome any critiques.

Thanks,
Kent

Portrait specs and reference photo
 

Sorry, I forgot to mention:

The portrait is 16 x 20 painted in oils with an acrylic underpainting.

Kent

Nice handling of the flesh tones and background.

My only criticism would be that when you are dealing with a lady who is a little full in the face, you have to be very very very very careful. Here, you could have squared the jaw line more, causing the left side of the face (her right) to appear narrower as in the photo. With the jaw line too rounded, it fattens her face a bit - a big big no no. The eyes could have been a bit larger than life as well, rather than a bit smaller than life as you have depicted them. I would rather error on the side of being a tincy weency big on the eyes than too small. Ask any lady. :)

Good points
 

Thanks Lon. Those are very good points. I tried to slim the face a little but I guess it just wasn't enough to make a difference. Making it more square in some places, as you say, would help tremendously.

About the eyes: I always seem to end up with smaller eyes. If anyone can enlighten me on where I might be misjudging this, please comment.

Kent

Kent,

I'm posting a side-by-side photo and arrows on the painting where I see differences. On left eye viewing the portrait, it seem to not round as much and instead goes out towards the outside of her face. On right eye viewing the portrait, the eyelashes extend out further in the photo. Here eyebrows are also thicker in the photo.

Maybe you can see the arrow inside the right cheek (viewing the portrait), but it's not showing up over here.

See what you think.

Awesome! I think you captured the likeness and added lovely softness to skin and clothing - especially challenging to accomplish in hard sunlight. Did you utilize secondary lighting on faces? My only preference would be to leave more air around subjects and not crop so close to the figures. Bravo! They must be delighted.

Thanks
 

Jeanine,

Thanks for the compliments. About the light...no I did not use additional light (not even anything to bounce light back in) but I used my camera from my job which has a very very nice lense and can get the focus and light from a small place where your eye is looking. So it took a reading of the face and exposed for that.

Kent